Intelligence and Success – How Successful People Increase Their IQ

These four statistics from my five year study on the daily habits of the rich and poor caught me by complete surprise:

21% of the wealthy were “A” students.

41% of the wealthy were “B” students.

29% of the wealthy were “C” students.

7% of the wealthy were below average students.

77% of the wealthy were not exceptional students. In fact, more than a third underperformed academically. How can this be? I had always assumed that success in life and intelligence, were correlated. Since academic performance and a high IQ are typically correlated, these statistics provided real statistical evidence, to me, that a high IQ had no bearing on success in life. What an incredible revelation! Of course, like many of the statistics, this drove me to further research to better understand success and cognitive ability. What I uncovered is simply amazing, but before I rush in, I want to provide a framework on the fundamentals of how our brains work.

Brain 101

There are essentially three parts of the brain:

Brain Stem

Limbic System and

Neocortex

All three parts of the brain are connected through a series of nerve fibers.

Brain Stem

The brain stem is the oldest part of the brain. It is sometimes referred to as the Reptilian Brain, the Reactive Brain or the Instinctive Brain. At one time, it was the first and only part of our brain. The brain stem connects to our spinal cord which branches out to form our central nervous system. It is primarily made up of the Medulla Oblongata and the Pons. The brain stem controls all of our autonomic processes such as breathing, heart rate, swallowing, and organ function. It prompts hunger, our sex drive and the fight or flight mechanism. There is no thinking involved with the brain stem. It exists to ensure our survival.

Limbic System

The limbic system is the second oldest part of the brain. It is sometimes referred to as the Emotional Brain. It is where all of our emotions reside and takes part in memory storage, both long-term and short-term. It includes the following components:

Amygdala – Memory and emotions.

Hypothalmus – Muscle vibrations and internal temperature. This is why you shiver when you are sick. The hypothalmus increases body temperature to kill bacteria. Muscle vibrations generate heat to kill bacteria. The hypothalmus also controls appetite and hormones.

Thalmus – Sits right next to the Basal Ganglia. Affects touch, pain, temperature and muscles.

Hippocampus – Where short-term memory is stored. Occasionally it will move short-term memory to long-term storage in the neocortex.

Olfactory Lobe – Triggers smell. This is why smell sometimes evokes emotions. They both are connected in the limbic system.

Recticular Activating System – Vets the sensory information we take in. Most sensory information is blocked out by the recticular activating system.

Cingulate Cortex – Creates Mirror Neurons that are critical to developing new skills and for survival. These mirror neurons program children to mirror the behavior and emotions of their parents, good or bad. It is sometimes called the Monkey See, Monkey Do process.

Basal Ganglia – This is where habits are stored. The basal ganglia acts like the hub of a wheel for neural pathways created in the neocortex. Habits are formed when we repeatedly use certain neural pathways. The brain will create a hub inside the basal ganglia and link to that often used neural path. The hub stays there forever. That is why habits are hard to break. It takes 18 to 254 days for the brain to create a hub in the basal ganglia and, thus form a habit.

Neocortex

This is the newest, most unusual part of the brain. It is found only in mammals. It is most of our brain. Fully 5/6ths of our brain mass is made up of the neocortex. It has the most neurons – 40 billion. It is sometimes referred to as the Thinking Brain, Higher Brain, Conscious Brain, Cerebrum or Cerebral Cortex. It is responsible for learning, long-term memory, thought creation and decision making. It is comprised of the four lobes: Parietal, Frontal, Temporal (vision) and Occipital (vision), the Amygdalae and the Corpus Callosum – a bundle of nerves that connects the two hemispheres of the neocortex. It takes in and processes all sensory data.

Neurons

It is estimated that the average adult has between 23 to 100 billion neurons. The jury is still out on this. No one really knows. The preponderance of the research I’ve done seems to skew toward 100 billion. A neuron is also known as a brain cell. Each neuron is made up of one axon and multiple dendrites. Each axon and dendrite have multiple branches, just like trees. When neurons talk to each other, this is known as a synapse. Axons receive communications from another neuron through each one of its branches and dendrites send communications to other axons on other neurons through each one of its branches. The synaptic gap is an indentation on each dendrite that an axon branch sends its signals through. Think of each axon branch as a plug and each dendrite indentation as an outlet. The axon branch plugs into each dendrite outlet and viola, we have a connection. The most powerful neurons are called spindle cells. These are like neurons on steroids. They are bigger neurons; four times bigger than all other neurons, with long, thick extensions that look like spindles. They reside primarily in the cingulate cortex and are able to connect divergent information quickly and efficiently. No other species on earth has the abundance of spindle cells humans do. Spindle cells make human unique among all species. Because of their size, spindle cells are capable of faster communication over longer distances. Think of ordinary neurons as local neighborhood roads and spindle cells as the German autobahn highway. Spindle cells are the superhighways of the brain. They are where intuition comes from and gives us the ability to make instant, quick decisions.

Ok, thanks for staying with me so far. I’m almost done with laying our foundation. Neuroscience (the study of the brain), over the past ten years, has completely changed our understanding of how the brain works. We now know that the brain changes every day. We can rewire our brains (called neuroplasticity). We also now know that the hippocampus gives birth to thousands of new neurons every day (called neurogenesis). That’s new because for over a hundred years we were told that the number of neurons was fixed at birth. We also now have a better understanding of what memory is and how memory happens. Once again, one of our hardest working brain parts, the hippocampus, is a main player in the formation of long-term memory (called long-term potentiation). We now know that when we sleep the hippocampus and the cortex are hard at work creating memories. We also now know, thanks to the study of, and mapping of, the genome, that genes give us the ability to increase our IQs during our lifetime. We know that IQ can change over time. It’s not fixed. Just because you were a “C” student at age 17 with an IQ of 100 doesn’t necessarily mean you will stay that way. You can increase your IQ all during your life, even into your eighties.

Success and Your Brain

Because of the recent advancement in our understanding of how the brain works, we now know how it is possible for unexceptional students, with average IQs, to achieve incredible success in life. They are able to increase their cognitive abilities and become exceptionally intelligent individuals with high IQs later in life. In effect they are able to re-wire their brains and change their brains. How? Wealthy, successful individuals do certain things every day that improve their brains and continuously increase their intelligence during their lifetimes. These activities increase brain mass by increasing and strengthening old neural connections and by creating entirely new neural connections. Let’s touch on some of the brain-building activities of wealthy, successful people.

Daily Learning

Every time you learn something new, you re-wire your brain. New neurons are recruited and begin firing with one another (known as synapses). As new neural pathways are created by learning, your brain actually increases in size; your intelligence grows. 88% of the wealthy in my study, sometime prior to realizing financial success in life, formed the daily habit of engaging in 30 minutes or more of self-education reading. This daily habit allowed them to increase their cognitive abilities during their lives, which contributed to their success in life.

Daily Aerobic Exercise

Aerobic exercise floods the bloodstream with oxygen. This oxygen eventually makes its way to the brain. Since the brain uses 20% of our oxygen reserves, increased oxygen flow into the brain soaks up more free radicals inside the brain, making it cleaner and healthier. 20 – 30 minutes of aerobic exercise every day has been proven to stimulate the growth of axons and axon branches on each neuron. The number of axons and axon branches your brain has is directly related to your intelligence. Aerobic exercise also increases the release of neurotrophins, or Nerve Growth Factor (NFG). NFG stimulates the growth of neurons, helps maintain a healthy coating around every neuron (called myelin sheath) and stimulates synaptic communications between neurons. Increased synaptic communication translates into better memory and speed of recall. So daily aerobic exercise increases your intelligence, each and every time you engage in it.

Avoid Intoxication

Our livers are able to process at most, about two ounces of alcohol an hour (about two 12 ounce glasses of beer). Anything in excess of that will allow alcohol to enter our bloodstream and be carried along to our brain. Neurologists are still debating the long-accepted belief that alcohol kills brain cells. Some say it does, others disagree. What they all agree on is that once alcohol reaches the brain it infiltrates the glutamate receptors in your synapses, damaging the neurons’ ability to fire off signals. If you regularly drink in excess you are causing long-term damage to these receptors and this can cause long-term or permanent damage to your memory and your motor skills. Is it a coincidence that 84% of the wealthy in my study drank less than two ounces of alcohol a day? I don’t think so. Their moderation in the consumption of alcohol helps them keep their brains growing and improving.

Getting a Good Night’s Sleep

89% of the wealthy in my study slept an average of seven hours or more each night. Why is sleep so important to brain function? To understand this, we need to understand sleep. Everyone who sleeps goes through four to six sleep cycles that last about 90 minutes per sleep cycle. Each of these sleep cycles is composed of five separate levels of sleep: Alpha, theta, delta, rapid eye movement (REM) and then back to theta. For each individual sleep cycle, the first three sleep levels (alpha, theta and delta) last 65 minutes. REM lasts 20 minutes and the final level of sleep lasts 5 minutes. The number of hours you sleep is less important than the number of complete sleep cycles you have when you sleep. Five complete sleep cycles a night is considered optimal. Completing less than four sleep cycles a night, however, negatively affects our health. REM sleep is particularly important as it’s primary function appears to be long-term memory storage. During REM sleep, what we’ve learned the day before is transported to the hippocampus. If we do not complete at least four 90 minute sleep cycles a night, long-term memory storage becomes impaired. Completing at least four sleep cycles the night after learning a new skill or the night after studying for a test locks in the new skill or study material. If we get less than four complete 90 minute sleep cycles the night after learning a new skill or the night after studying for a test, it is as if we did not practice the skill or did not study at all because it never fully gets transferred to long-term memory. So sleep helps you remember what you’ve learned.

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